EDWARD ROWLAND SILL.

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WORK.

1.  What is wise work, and what is foolish work?  What the difference between sense and nonsense, in daily occupation?  There are three tests of wise work:—­that it must be honest, useful and cheerful.

It is Honest.  I hardly know anything more strange than that you recognize honesty in play, and do not in work.  In your lightest games, you have always some one to see what you call “fair-play.”  In boxing, you must hit fair; in racing, start fair.  Your English watchword is “fair-play,” your English hatred, “foul-play.”  Did it never strike you that you wanted another watchword also, “fair-work,” and another and bitterer hatred,—­“foul-work”?

2.  Then wise work is Useful.  No man minds, or ought to mind, its being hard, if only it comes to something; but when it is hard and comes to nothing, when all our bees’ business turns to spiders’, and for honey-comb we have only resultant cobweb, blown away by the next breeze,—­that is the cruel thing for the worker.  Yet do we ever ask ourselves, personally, or even nationally, whether our work is coming to anything or not?

3.  Then wise work is Cheerful, as a child’s work is.  Everybody in this room has been taught to pray daily, “Thy Kingdom come.”  Now if we hear a man swearing in the streets we think it very wrong, and say he “takes God’s name in vain.”  But there’s a twenty times worse way of taking His name in vain than that.  It is to ask God for what we don’t want.  If you don’t want a thing don’t ask for it:  such asking is the worst mockery of your King you can insult Him with.  If you do not wish for His kingdom, don’t pray for it.  But if you do, you must do more than pray for it; you must work for it.  And, to work for it, you must know what it is.

4.  Observe, it is a Kingdom that is to come to us; we are not to go to it.  Also it is not to come all at once, but quietly; nobody knows how.  “The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation.”  Also, it is not to come outside of us, but in our hearts:  “The Kingdom of God is within you.”  Now if we want to work for this Kingdom, and to bring it, and to enter into it, there’s one curious condition to be first accepted.  We must enter into it as children, or not at all; “Whosoever will not receive it as a little child shall not enter therein.”  And again, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

5.  Of such, observe.  Not of children themselves, but of such as children.  It is the character of children we want and must gain.  It is modest, faithful, loving, and because of all these characters it is cheerful.  Putting its trust in its father, it is careful for nothing—­being full of love to every creature, it is happy always, whether in its play or in its duty.  Well, that’s the great worker’s character also.  Taking no thought for the morrow; taking thought only for the duty of the day; knowing indeed what labor is, but not what sorrow is; and always ready for play—­beautiful play.